Are smartphones listening to your conversations? What Google, Facebook, and Amazon have to say

Is my smartphone eavesdropping on my conversation? We all have thought about it at some point of time. Recent reports suggest that this common suspicion could be a reality!
A report by 404 Media says that Cox Media Group (CMG), a major media giant in television and radio news, said that it can target “adverts based on what potential customers said out loud near device microphones, and explicitly points to Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Bing as CMG partners,”.